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1401. Mark Mothersbaugh Composes for Sims 2

Written on Monday 23 August 2004 at 17:32 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

EA has announced that Mark Mothersbaugh, recently honored with the BMI music award for Outstanding Career Achievement, is the composer of the theme music for the Sims 2. Mothersbaugh has scored, composed or directed music for several films in the past, like Envy (2004), Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), Rugrats Go Wild (2003), Thirteen (2002), The Royal Tennenbaums (2001), Rushmore (1999) and Happy Gilmore (1996). The Sims 2 will now carry his music as well, which Mark says is "just another vehicle to express my creativity and allow my fans to enjoy my music."

Besides just the theme tune, Mark's music will also be heard in other areas of the game, including the Create-A-Sim area, and the build and buy modes. For more information, read the press release from EA.

1402. The Sims 2 Movie and Screenshots

Written on Monday 23 August 2004 at 01:10 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

German unofficial fansite thesims.de has been to the Games Convention in Germany too, and they've posted a special with screenshots and a video. The video, 22 Mb, shows a fire being extinguished by 2 firemen. That's something that hasn't been seen before (except in some screenshots). See their GC Special page for the download, as well as some screenshots and photos. Some more pictures can be seen at their first newspost and second newspost from the Games Convention. The quality of all the media isn't great as the shots are taken from a PC screen with a camera, but it's worth looking at.

1403. First Sims 2 Commercial

Written on Sunday 22 August 2004 at 21:30 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The first Sims 2 commercial has been spotted on VH1 in the USA. JDB5001 in the TSR Forums has recorded the clip and put it online. It's 810 Kb and in Windows Media format. It's been mirrored on our servers: click here to download it (please do not leech/hot-link!). It isn't in the same style as the magazine ads seen before, but it shows mostly in-game material instead. The entire clip is 28 seconds. Enjoy it.

1404. Urbz Previews

Written on Sunday 22 August 2004 at 17:03 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Two more previews of the Urbz have popped up on the net. The first one comes from the Games Convention in Germany, which our affiliate SimsZone is visiting. They've posted a preview (with pictures) of the game. Much news isn't brought in from them, though they do note that the Urbz won't be able to own their own crib in the game. Instead, you can buy one - or more - of 21 rooms available in the city. For the entire article - in German - and some pictures taken of the game on the X-Box, click here.

The other preview comes from Computer and Video Games (CVG). They don't give any news as well, but they don't seem to be very positive either. The conclusion is that the Sims will never be cool, and the Urbz won't change that - "it's trying too hard". See the entire preview for their full opinion. Two screenshots which are included with the preview can be found below - click the thumbnails to enlarge.

1405. Sims 2 Previews & Lots of Screenshots [Update]

Written on Sunday 22 August 2004 at 16:49 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

A Portuguese website, PTgamers, had published a massive amount of 589 screenshots of the Sims 2 along with a preview. The screenshots are in English, but for unknown reasons they've been taken offline now (at least you can't access them without tricks anymore). Nevertheless they can be found in this thread on the forums of the (Dutch) SP Zone.

To see all screenshots (very slow!) from the original site - start with http://www.ptgamers.com/fotos/50917.jpg and increase the number by one each time to see the next shot.

Furthermore our colleagues of SimsZone are visiting the Games Convention in Leipzig (Germany). They've written a part of the Sims 2 in their GC 2004 special. They don't give much new info about the game though (unlike their review), but there are some details of the filmmaking feature in it. They've seen a video which will be published soon, but the main info is that it takes a lot of work to record the video stories that we've seen. Every scene is recorded multiple times from different angles. It will take time to get the hang of recording top movies, and once everything is taped you will still have to paste everything together using a movie editor - which will take some patience. Finally SimsZone also tells us that there of course will be more SimDays with downloads, and that the exchange will play an important role in the future. See their Sims 2 GC page for some pictures. There's also an article about Jeanette Biedermann, a German celeb who is promoting the Sims 2 in Germany, with some pictures.

[Update 18:00] SimsZone has reported that some of their members found this site which has copied all the new screenshots from PTGamers. It's a faster site which still has everything available. Thanks to The Sims 2 Junkbox for hosting the images.

1406. Urbz DS Previews and Screens

Written on Saturday 21 August 2004 at 15:39 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Besides coming to the consoles and the GBA, the Urbz will also be one of the titles that will be released at the same time as Nintendo's new handheld, the DS. Two previews of the Urbz for the DS have been written and posted, one on Nintendojo and the other one on Cubed-3. Real news isn't mentioned, but there are two new screenshots to stare at. The conclusion between the sites differ slightly, as Cubed3 isn't extremely positive. They say the DS version uses the features of the new platform in a nice way, but it's all a bit gimmicky and not very different from the GBA version. Nintendojo is more excited to actually play the game. Read the previews from Nintendojo or Cubed3. Click the thumbnails below to see the larger versions of the screenshots.

1407. Lucy's Mail: Bloopers

Written on Saturday 21 August 2004 at 15:25 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

This week's mail from Lucy is full of bloopers. During the development of the Sims 2, there have been many bugs (which won't be in the final version). And besides the ones causing severe headaches and costing a lot of coffee and aspirins, there are the fun ones. The last group of course raises a few laughs, and thanks to Lucy you can now laugh along as well. Included are several screenshots, and a 3.7 Mb AVI movie (7 seconds) to show some bloopers which occured during the development. To download the movie, click here. For the screenshots, see inside (the read more part). Read More!

1408. Chat Transcript: Numbers and Figures

Written on Friday 20 August 2004 at 15:21 by ChEeTaH - 14 comments.

The chat last night was quite a success, despite Lucy not being there. In her place was the Tuning team. MaxisKevin, MaxisHunter, MaxisDestry and MaxisDoctorVu answered many questions. The transcripts have been posted, but if you're too lazy to read that here are some highlights:

• Sims don't have to be married to get a baby
• Sims will not leave the lot when giving birth to a baby
• Sims can't die from sickness or fire until they're Teens
• Although twins are still a possibility, triplets have been taken out
• Any NPC (including the burglar) can be married, but the NPC will be replaced by another one
• The lifetime of a Sim ranges from 70 to 90 days. This is split up as follows: Baby: 3 days; Toddler: 4 days; Children: 8 days; Teens: 15 days; Adults: 29 days; Elders: 11-31 days. The life of a Sim can be extended by using the Elexir of Life which makes the Sim approximately 7-8 days younger, but they won't go back to the previous life stage
• All young Sims have the Grow Up aspiration (which includes learning to walk, talk, etc), as soon as a Sim grows up to Teen you get to choose their Aspiration track (Fame, Family, Fortune, Knowledge, Romance)
• The wants and fears have the chance of being rotated on a daily basis
• You can lock a want (or fear) by right-clicking it, if you want to focus on it
• One aspiration reward is the SimVac object, which sucks skill points from other Sims
• To change the appearance of a Sim, simply use the mirror
• There will be 10 careers with 10 levels each
• In Private school Children/Teens can gain skills from chance cards
• Sims in Private school might have an advantage in their career
• Sims can start gaining skills points as soon as they're toddlers
• Skills do not decay
• The autonomy of Sims has been much improved making them smarter. To make them stupid again, you can just turn off autonomy. Sims can take care of their moods better now, but still not perfectly efficiently.
• Instead of being sent to Military school, children with bad grades at school will be taken away by the Social worker. They might appear in the game again though, if by chance they're adopted by another family in the neighborhood.
• You can build 5 floors without, or 4 floors with a foundation (and you can put a roof on top of that)
• Teens can walk away from home and be brought back by the cops, but they won't end up in jail whatsoever
• There will be 6 or 7 different gnome designs
• And about 16 cinematic cut scenes
• When chatting on the Sim-computer, you can see who else from the neighborhood is online and chat to them
• Maxis will try to hold more chats until the release of the game, as well as some after the release

Of course more questions have been answered, but you have to read the transcript for those.

1409. UrbzDay

Written on Thursday 19 August 2004 at 16:35 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

This thursday comes, as usual, with some new information of the Urbz, from the official website. The weekly blog is slightly different than other weeks, as it's not Scot Amos (Producer Console version) or Virigina McArthur (GBA Producer), but a certain Craig (Web Developer) who wrote it. He tells his story on how this week's blog was born - but don't take everything in it too seriously. Furthermore there is some GBA stuff, though it's not really new. There are 4 screenshots which have been published by WorthPlaying before, and the same is with the 2 new movies which were published as a set of 5 earlier as well. There are also some brand new "Punk" screenshots of the Console version, which you can see completely by clicking the thumbnails below. That's all for the Urbz this week.

1410. New Poll

Written on Thursday 19 August 2004 at 16:14 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Last week's poll was quite popular, with 748 votes. We asked you which default Sims 2 families you're most likely to play the most. By far the most people have said to create their own families: 49%. About 19% will play all of them, or is yet undecided. The most popular family is the Goth family, with 8%, followed by the Newbies (assuming they'll be in the game) at 5%. The Baxters and the Smiths got 4.5% and 4% each. For the exact results with all (known) families, visit the results page.

This week the poll is about the Urbz, specifically the console version: which character that has been announced in the "Crew" section at the official site do you like the most? Vote on the right, or on the latest poll page.